Look who’s talking

Retired Gen. Rodolfo Canieso showed off anew his acerbic wit during his testimony at the wiretapping probe of the committee on national defense and security chaired by Sen. Rodolfo Biazon last Jan. 19 at the Senate.

Responding to a query on how to handle illegal orders from military or civilian superiors, Canieso retorted: "If you get a stupid order, obey it to the best of your stupidity!"

From watching the televised Senate hearing, I got the impression Canieso was not joking nor trying to sound smart-alecky about it. I think he was merely speaking from experience during his own days as a young military officer during the martial law regime in our country when they did the same things. He attended the Senate hearing upon invitation of Biazon regarding the alleged wiretapping conducted by the Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), the infamous "Hello Garci" telephone conversations. Retired Navy Commodore Rex Robles and former military rebel-turned Senator Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan were also invited as resource persons in this hearing.

I came to know this character Canieso way back when we used to buttonhole him at Malacañang Palace when he was tapped, after his retirement from the military, to serve as the chief of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) during the term of former President Corazon Aquino. (Incidentally, it's the 73rd birthday of Mrs. Aquino today.) At the Senate hearing, Canieso testified that his telephone conversations with the office of opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson, where he works as a consultant, were also bugged by the ISAFP. Honasan, for his part, complained that he, too, was apparently victimized by the same ISAFP wiretapping activities during the campaign for the May 2005 elections when he was active as one of the security advisers of the late presidential candidate, actor Fernando Poe Jr.

It was a reunion of sorts for Canieso and his former military superiors who also attended that Senate hearing like former Defense Secretary Fortunato Abat, and retired Maj. Gen. Ramon Montano who were there to cheer their comrades in arms. The cast was complete in this Senate hearing that was also attended by Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Alfredo Lim. But being formerly connected with the defense establishment, Senators Enrile, Biazon, and Lim, along with Canieso, Honasan, and Robles were, however, obviously less than candid that they themselves knew very well wiretapping were being done when they were also still in the police and military.

I would grant the wisdom of the military leadership’s silence after being caught engaged in illegal wiretapping of no less than President Arroyo, their own Commander-in-Chief, being caught on tape by enterprising agent or agents of ISAFP who sold them out to the highest bidders. So I don’t agree with Canieso in calling them "stupid." In fact, I think that was the reason why presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye, lawyer Allan Paguia, former Sen. Francisco Tatad, and former NBI deputy director Samuel Ong have copies of those tapes.

Taking place at the same time in another venue at the Senate was the hearing of the Senate foreign relations committee chaired by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez and other officials from the Executive Department were being grilled about the possible review or abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) after the US government invoked a provision to justify their right to refuse custody of the four American servicemen accused in the Subic rape case involving a Filipina from Zamboanga. But instead of talking about his testimony on the VFA before the Senate hearing, Gonzalez was all over television and radio being interviewed on his disclosure about a possible coup d’ etat that was supposed to have started last weekend.

Gonzalez refused though to reveal the source of this intelligence information that came to his knowledge after the escape of the four Oakwood mutineers from their detention in the Army camp in Fort Bonifacio last week. He claimed the information pointed to the escape as just a prelude of the supposed latest coup attempt against the Arroyo administration. He only described as "credible" and "verifiable" the same information that was also furnished to President Arroyo by her national security cluster of advisers who included the Justice Secretary himself.

Whether we believed it or not, we had to put our reporters and photographers on alert on this supposed intelligence information of the Justice Secretary who happens to be a senior member of the Cabinet. But all we got that weekend was loss of sleep.

Adding fuel to the fire, that same day Gonzalez went to town crying wolf, uncrowned presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor was telling those who cared to listen that any new people power revolution would not simply start with any withdrawal of military support but would this time draw blood. The combination of Gonzalez and Defensor leading the scare tactics of the Arroyo administration was the laughing stock of the top military officials I talked to that night.

So I was not surprised at all when no less than Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff Gen. Generoso Senga himself called a press conference in the first hours of Monday morning at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City. Senga should know better how psy-war operations work. He was once the official spokesman of the AFP.

Senga’s full-blown press conference, however, took place belatedly. Obviously trying to protect his own head like an ostrich, Senga did not take it upon himself to confront the issues right away when the four detained Oakwood mutineers flew the coop. He was also nowhere to defend the AFP when Marine Capt. Nicanor Faeldon escaped last month and kept resurfacing in military and police camps seemingly unmolested. It was more of personal reasons why Senga broke his silence when it was his rumored resignation went around the mills. A few hours later after the press conference of Senga last Monday, ABS-CBN aired exclusive interview by their news anchor Karen Davila with one of the four Fort Bonifacio escapees purportedly held somewhere in Metro Manila.

Hopefully, President Arroyo’s convening of the Council of State meeting at Malacañang yesterday would lower the decibels of these coup rumors. While major personalities have snubbed the meeting, it would at least keep these supposedly responsible officials reined in and their coup-happy tongues held in check from wagging. And I thought it was a case of "wag the dog" as the in thing to usher in the year of the dog!

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